Matt Webb on the return of his communal short fiction blog, and how it fits on the internet today: “It seems to me that, sometime in the last 17 years, the web forgot the simple pleasure of making, and appreciating what’s made, together.” (Cynical old me thinks that’s because ‘the web’ isn’t a thing anymore; it’s all smartphones and social media and clickbait and humanity’s worst tendencies laid bare. Sigh.) #link

“For Tinsley, the spiritualist, the metaphor of checkers as a well without end was both poetic and true. But Schaeffer, the engineer, knew that no well is bottomless. And humans will always sound the depth.” #link

Aggretsuko (who is pretty funny, as it happens) represents part of a new wave for the people behind Hello Kitty, with characters that are “more in sync with the ambivalent humor of memes or the antihero characters of prestige television”. Like an egg yolk with ennui. #link

Black holes could delete the Universe, apparently. But they’re also the ultimate hard drive. My head is spinning. [c/o Kottke.org] #video

“More than 90 percent of GoFundMe campaigns never meet their goal.” And for those who are successful, it’s as much a matter of luck as careful planning — even more so for those raising crisis funds, to pay for medical bills and the like. #link

On a related note to my last post, here’s Mishaal Al Gergawi’s digest of what he learned from reading modern history. (The thing he notes about people from a distance being less compromising rings true for me, as an Irish person who sees Irish-Americans venerate the Republican armed movement without ever having to face the consequences up close.) #link

Bill Wurtz covers the history of the entire world in under 20 minutes. [c/o Kottke.org] #video

This brand of obsessiveness is nothing new, but the way the internet breaks down so many barriers — between online celebrities and their fans; between private data and, well, anyone who wants it bad enough — lends a far creepier edge than ever before. #link

Another automatic transcription service (not that I’ve tried the others I’ve linked here yet) but this one’s based in DCU’s start-up incubator, where they’ve got some top notch machine learning talent. Also they charge, about €5.40 for an hour of audio, so the quality had better be good. #link

It’s a maddening catch-22 situation. Such mass preservation of knowledge is the kind of thing governments should be doing, but they can’t justify the expense. Private enterprises like Google can, but the fear of proprietary ownership of knowledge shuts the whole thing down. Gah! The best we can hope for is that Google (or someone else) continues the project for a future generation that will see its value to the whole over the objections of the few. #link

“This year especially there’s an uncomfortable feeling in the tech industry that we did something wrong, that in following our credo of ‘move fast and break things’, some of what we knocked down were the load-bearing walls of our democracy.” The collateral damage of building for the reality we hope to create, rather than the one we live in, to paraphrase my previous link. But Cegłowski goes a lot deeper that that in this tech conference talk from earlier in the year. And it doesn’t get more damning, more cyberpunk dystopian than this: “The algorithms have learned that users interested in politics respond more if they’re provoked more, so they provoke.” #link

“The problem with connecting everyone on the planet is that a lot of people are assholes.” That’s it right there. I don’t subscribe to the notion that people in general are fundamentally decent; there’s too much evidence to the contrary. Social media — in ushering in an era where everyone is online, not just a self-selecting proportion — reveals that much. Does Facebook care about that? It’s a different kind of caring, to be charitable; rooted in head-in-the-sand techno-utopianism that strives for solutions to problems no one really has, while ignoring the actual problems people have right now. As Mat Honan writes: “You have to build for the reality we live in, not the one we hope to create.” #link

“A subreddit around interactive explanations, thinking tools, concept visualizations, and other media for communicating and generating ideas.” Even at that, much of this goes way over my head. But it’s still worth a browse. #link

“We once used chess-playing as a barometer of intelligence and became disturbed when computers got smarter than us.” But at the same time, as Andrew Blevins writes, they’re putting a light to what Turing called our ‘shadowy little box’ of intelligence. [c/o 5it] #link

Read the whole thing. Patriarchy, toxic masculinity, etc is so fucking damaging, and men who can’t see that simply haven’t been looking hard enough in that particular closet. I guess for me, the door’s always been slightly ajar, not conforming as I do to the usual ‘man’ stereotypes (I don’t drink beer, I don’t like football, etc). But I still raise my voice and yell when I’m frustrated by situations, and I do not like that about myself. #link

“The future will not have the nine till five. Instead, the whole day will be interspersed with other parts of your life. Scheduling will become freeform.” Ah, the privilege of having a career one loves to the point where work/life balance is no longer a relevant concern. #link

Tower Bridge is but the latest in a long line. There’s something here about the experience of buildings and objects in their environment, and the nature of reality, that makes me think of Blade Runner: the synthetic animals, ‘More Human Than Human’, etc. You get my drift. #link

“For the bullshitter, it doesn’t really matter if he is right or wrong. What matters is that you’re paying attention.” The proximity of that sentiment to the Deepak Chopra references further on did not go unnoticed. But he’s a sideshow to the real danger of the anti-vaxxer scourge. [c/o LinkMachineGo] #link

Ross Andersen on a fascinating project in Siberia, already decades old, that’s attempting to resurrect the Mammoth Steppe ecosystem. It’s not just the scale of the biome itself in terms of both the space and time required (it’s a ‘Long Now’ kind of deal, for sure, when we’re talking about “a global land war” between grasses and forests over tens of millions of years) but the mind-boggling accelerated futurism involved in creating the approximation of an extinct species that might be the key to such a biome thriving beyond human hands. That’s not to mention the intersections of and implications for climate science and geopolitics and biotechnology and ethical philosophy. Wow, just wow. #link

Whatever the perceived benefits of wearing a helmet (which I do) or high-vis clothing (which I don’t), let’s be honest here: drivers are getting off scot-free on this ‘debate’. We in Ireland and the UK live in a car-centric culture, not to the extent of the US but real enough to stymie any real investment in and commitment to cycling safety via proper infrastructure and legislation. By the way, how about also factoring into safety studies the kind of driver that passes closely: in my anecdotal experience, it’s usually a taxi or similar professional road user, or a private individual in an expensive saloon like a Mercedes or a BMW. Let the sociologists unpack that one. #link

Ten days left to back the Kickstarter for Rumble Road, a strategy road-trip game managing a group of rookie wrestlers across the country towards their big payday. Update 2017.03.23: the project's been cancelled with a few days to go, as developer Steve Kim wasn't seeing the support he needed. That's a real shame. There's a place for a game like this, and hopefully Kim will find someone else willing to take on the project or share the burden down the road.#video

Bee and I had media passes to attend the first day of #GamerConDublin (or GamerCon Dublin, whatever it’s called) at the Convention Centre Dublin. It’s an event that generated a bit of controversy within hours of doors opening, as you might have read.

I tweeted some of our own experience of our visit, which I’m repeating here with additional observations.